


Covenant

by TheScholarlyStrumpet (equipoise)



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Priest Kink, Referenced prostitution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-10
Updated: 2017-07-10
Packaged: 2018-11-20 14:53:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11337747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/equipoise/pseuds/TheScholarlyStrumpet
Summary: Gold didn't know why she'd come that first day. Boredom. Curiosity, maybe. It wasn't just to lure the eyes of pious men or else she wouldn't have made her way to his confessional, filled his burning ears with her filthy secrets. He'd sent her away with a stern admonishment and enough Hail Marys to keep her dirty mouth occupied until the next Sunday service.And then she returned. Week after week. Another barely appropriate dress, another crimson lipped smile, another session on that wooden bench. Her sweet, liquor-scented voice filling the closed-in space, ripe with new temptations.Escort!Lacey x Priest!Gold





	Covenant

He knew the moment she'd entered the confessional booth. Before that, really. The unsteady tapping of her heels as she approached was a dead giveaway, hips rolling in that exaggerated figure eight. No one else in town walked like that. Even here, she'd be advertising. 

Who was he kidding? Especially here. 

Her spicy perfume wafted toward him and his mouth went dry. There was a greeting he'd have given anyone else on the other side of that screen. It was traditional and stoic and he could recite it in his sleep. Had probably done just that, in the hazier summer months, when his head and eyelids began to droop in that claustrophobic little cubby. 

Offering an ear to sinners was a surprisingly monotonous way to pass the time. 

So it had seemed, until Lacey French came click-clacking into his church. He'd seen her in the pews that very first morning and known, instinctively, that she wasn't looking for absolution. There was something too keenly predatory in her gaze, a defensive steeliness of her spine. She was dangerously lovely. 

An old lady in a feathered hat had whispered to him. “That's the French girl. Pity what happened there. She used to be a nice girl.”

Father Gold had surveyed the French girl's demure dress, high necked and falling just above the knee. A contrast to her red painted mouth, the corners curling upward at other townsfolk in a smile that was more challenge than greeting.  

Despite his desire to appear uninterested in town gossip, he found himself asking what had happened. He had only come to Storybrooke parish a little while ago and this woman in the ridiculous hat was all too happy to indulge his curiosity. 

With malicious glee, the old woman recounted the fall of the town hussy. “Used to be she was just hustling pool down by the harbor. Wasn't bad enough, I ‘spose. Now she's selling something else, entirely.” The woman made a tutting sound. “Disgraceful, touting her wares in a house of God.”

Gold’s lips had pressed thin, teeth gnashing back an unexpected ire. “It seems to me that Miss French has as much right to be here as any of His children. And if she is what you say, would you have me turn away the Magdalene, come humbly to His house?”

The woman’s face had turned a satisfactory shade of puce before she bowed her head in false contrition. 

Of course, Lacey wasn't really here humbly. Not when she caught his eye, boldly and deliberately, and winked. Not when she stood from the pew and turned, revealing her pale, smooth back left completely uncovered by the turquoise fabric of her dress. 

Gold didn't know why she'd come that first day. Boredom. Curiosity, maybe. It wasn't just to lure the eyes of pious men or else she wouldn't have made her way to his confessional, filled his burning ears with her filthy secrets. He'd sent her away with a stern admonishment and enough Hail Marys to keep her dirty mouth occupied until the next Sunday service. 

And then she returned. Week after week. Another barely appropriate dress, another crimson lipped smile, another session on that wooden bench. Her sweet, liquor-scented voice filling the closed-in space, ripe with new temptations. 

It was different today, when she slithered into the dim little box. There was an air of breathless anticipation to her. He could practically hear her panting from the other side of the latticed window. 

He'd already gone too long without speaking those scripted words, this time. Too long with the silence stretching and twisting around his bowstring taut limbs. Tension coiling, serpentine in his belly. No matter. She'd heard it dozens of times, by now. She could have greeted him the same way for all the words had any substance in these moments. 

“Miss French,” he said, at last, feeling like an echo, a hollow sound carried over from when the formality still meant something.

“A new customer came to see me last night,” she spoke without greeting, without preamble, as though picking up the thread of a previous conversation. “He... reminded me of you. Same height and build. Same sort of… gentility. I guess you might call it ‘grace.’” She shifted in her seat, the fabric of her skirt rustling as she exhaled slowly. “He had that same lost, wild look in his eye. The one you get when you think no one is looking.”

Gold felt his face grow hot. 

“But he couldn't be you, could he,  _ Father _ ?” She wielded his title in her mouth like a weapon, loaded and precise. “No white collar. Nothing to bind him or hold  _ him _ back. And he wore blue. Rich and deep blue, a… a sumptuous color, I could almost call it.” Her fingers pressed against the latticework covering the window between them. He could feel her watching him. 

Gold willed himself not to look up, not to meet those bright blue eyes peering through the mesh, piercing and forceful as an ocean wave. One look from her would be the undertow, pulling him down down down. He could face the thought of drowning. What he hated was how badly he wanted it. 

“You always wear black,” she continued, conversationally. “Black as night - the kind without stars. The witching hour where secrets can hide in plain sight.” A slightly dramatic pause.  “Black as sin.”

Lacey always had a way with words. She could have been a poet, in another life. For all he knew, she was one already. He knew nothing of her beyond what passed between them, the way her voice whispered over his flesh, a caress with razor-sharp talons. 

“But  _ you _ wouldn't know anything about Sin, now would you Father? I mean, not from personal experience anyway. Not that visceral, hands on kind of education.” She hummed, a sad little sound that mocked the idea of pity. Lacey didn't take pity on him. If she did, she'd have stopped coming back. 

Gold said nothing. What could he say to that, after all? It wasn’t really a question. 

“This man… he barely said a word when I let him in the door. Could hardly meet my eye. But we don't always need words in my profession. They're only useful to a point.” Lacey leaned back, her hand falling away to smooth her skirt over her lap. 

Gold allowed himself to watch this, to let hungry eyes drink their fill so long as she was pretending not to see him. The unobserved observer. 

Shameful voyeur that he was. 

She heaved a long sigh, chest rising and falling slowly beneath a pink satin top “He watched me undress…” her hand toyed with the top button, just above the slope of her breasts, “and the way he looked at me…. oh, Father…” another deep breath, her knees falling apart. “It was like prayer, like holy contemplation. Of my breasts and my waist, my hips, my legs.” Her hand slid the length of her body as she spoke, stroking each area as she gave its name. “But he couldn't quite bring himself to look directly at it. The thing he wanted most. The reason he'd brought himself to my door in dark of night.”

She hitched her skirt, up past lean thighs that spread open with the movement. Of course she’d gone bare beneath it. 

Gold reminded himself to breathe. Then sucked in a lungful of air so sharply it burned. He savored the hurt.

Lacey's eyes were heavy lidded, one hand skimming the length of exposed thigh, trailing red tipped fingers up and back. “I feel no shame in the naked form, you - of all people - know that. Maybe I never inherited that lingering taste of apple, I don't know. I make my living with this body and I thought I knew it's worth, by now. Plenty of men have looked at me before, but none of them like that. I felt venerated, adored, and devoured all at once. In his eyes, I felt like I didn't have a price, anymore.”

Gold’s eyes closed, just briefly, savoring the slick scent that now joined her perfume. He took long greedy breaths, coating his tongue in her taste. 

“I watched him get hard, watched him decide if he would take himself in hand or let me. And I wanted him to let me. In that moment, I was moved. I've never been like that before. Not with a customer. Not even with a casual lover. But last night, I was consumed with the thought of how this man would taste, how he'd feel moving inside me.” Lacey laughed softly, “And he hadn't even removed his suit jacket.” 

Gold clenched both hands, letting his nails bite little half moons into his palms. His body was flushed and trembling, straining at his zipper, painfully confined. 

“Do you know what I did next, Father? I think you do. I think you know exactly how I undressed him. How I sucked him until he moaned my name. I think you know how I laid him back onto my bed and let him touch me all over with those tender, shaking hands. Like he’d never been with a woman before. Or at least not in a very, very long time.” Her eyes met his at last, one brow arching high. 

Gold swallowed a whimper, feeling the sweat lick a path down his spine. This was madness. The tortuous and tantalizing edge of Hell. His body moving step by step down a path swept clear by a that lipsticked mouth and those swiveling hips. It was his choice to make - to choose faith or the Fall. Safer to stay put (because if they switched seats, he’d have to admit he’d already chosen.) He looked away.

“He made me come on his fingers. Twice. I didn’t even have to fake it.” Another little laugh, wryer than the last time. “I was soaked the moment he touched me, the moment he made it real.” She released a shaky sigh, her voice lowering to a whisper as she leaned forward. “Is that what worship feels like?” When he still did not reply, Lacey slapped her hand against the latticed window, just hard enough to make him jump. “Tell me, Father! Because you would be the one to know: Was I the golden calf or the sacrificial lamb?” 

His eyes flicked back to hers, just over her rounded fingertips. Their gazes locked, hers filled with wildfire and a million unanswered questions. His… he could only imagine what she read there. 

Lacey’s lower lip shook and she sunk her teeth into it. When she spoke again, it was with the softness of a lover, raw silk wrapped around her hidden bleeding heart. “I kissed that man, Father. I never kiss. Not on the lips. But I needed him to know... “ her tongue traced the seam of her lips. “When he kissed back, it tasted like goodbye.” She exhaled slowly, her throat working soundlessly. 

Gold licked his own lips, searching out that phantom kiss, one hand reaching toward the window of its own volition.  “Lacey,” he breathed, seeking the warmth of her palm through the mesh and wood.

Lacey blinked rapidly and shook her head. “Please…. just tell me that’s not what it meant.” 

It was a rarity to see her so unguarded, a jewel in the rough that cut him deeper than any veiled barb could reach. Slicing through his defensive wall of silence. 

“A man should make no promises he cannot keep.” His voice was low and rasping from lack of use, pressed flat by the lump now residing at the back of his throat. 

Lacey was very still, her eyes sliding closed. “Then don’t make me any promises.” Her eyes opened again and caught his, holding them for a long moment. “Until next week, Father.” 

Father Gold nodded, not trusting himself to reply.   
  



End file.
